Ruairi's Blog

Last night, I was unfortunate enough to have some noisy revellers around my flat until the small hours, and coupled with the heat my plans for having a nice start today were somewhat scuppered. That said, knowing that I couldn’t sleep gave me the opportunity to study the Mind Sweep process a bit further. It became obvious that the more I forced myself to read, the less productive it was and my eyes were falling down the page.

At 3am, the police turned up and dealt with the nuisance which apparantly involved a group of students and some homeless people who were just hanging around being relatively harmless.

So – this evening I figured I really couldn’t get undertake the collection / Mind Sweep process – however I have put some ground work in, writing a long list of tasks that need dealing with soon, and moving in all the physical Inbox’y things I could into my room in my shared flat. It put things into perspective. Firstly – your initial Mind Sweep is going to be quite labourious, and for me at least, a bit shocking to see quite how much things need sorting. I literally have boxes and boxes of “stuff”, which I go through to find “things” – be it a USB cable or PSP game or whatever. I have thought though that I’d rather not spend too much time with micro-processing, as in, over-organising things like ordering clothes in my closet by colour or bunching network cables together by length. So, there’s tons of stuff to go through.

With this in mind I’m going to postpone my initial collection / process until the weekend when I’ll have a huge block of time to dedicate to this. However, it is worth noting that just these beginnings are really starting to show the potential for improvement. Part of me wishes life could give me a 90 second Rocky style montage where some heroic music plays and then as it ends I have evolved into pure awesome, but alas, one must deal with the mechanics of the real world.

Oh, and by the way – I’ve found a most fantastic link, the GTD Portal – check it out.

Hi. I’m Ruairi Fullam. I’m 27 and I work in IT consultancy, where I help small businesses with their computer networks, as well as doing all kinds of useful things like Web Programming, Linux Server Administration and, quite often, just being a friendly person to talk to. I also use commas way too much!

When away from vocational activities, I tend to enjoy DJ’ing and Music Production, socialising a lot (and drinking responsibly I might add!) and playing games on my PC. I also once a year run a 3-day computer arts event for the subculture of weird and wonderful creative people from the Demoscene. I am an active user of the questionably productive Twitter, where I tend to share rather silly observations on current affairs, computer technology, pop culture and I have been known just to use it to let people know what I’m up to.

Myself, Social Media and Marketing Guru Trey Pennington and Exeter City Center manager John Harvey. Avert your convulsion at my prolific name dropping!

So – it’s a happy and generally upbeat life for me! However, with such a diverse amount of things going on, things can descend into chaos. I feel reluctant to post the following stuff but I suppose this might be a bit of a cleansing thing, and a good first step into being more productive.

First of all, I’m more of a reactive instead of a proactive person. In fact, a lot of my clients would say that the way I react to situations is often excellent – prompt and friendly. The problem is, reactivity (ahem!) is probably second nature to me, and on occasion when I take a minute aside to consider life’s goings on, I realise guiltily that I’m not focusing on the future, be it medium or long term.

Secondly, I’m definitely an ideas person – but the most amazing ideas are nothing without actually following through. I’m guilty of thinking up some pretty awesome things, then getting no further than visualising the outcome, and reverting back into reactive mode, dealing with whatever is under my nose – and sometimes struggling with a cherry picking habit with that too.

And finally, I’m certain about one thing. I’d like to get married, start a family, buy a house, have a pension, be charitable and live conscientiously. Over and above that, I’d like to genuinely be something exceptional (well, not like Susan Boyle, ha!). I know I’m not unique in this (we are all snowflakes here!), but the aim here is live a life, not have it lived for me.

Getting Things Done by David Allen, the liberator of intensily cube-farmed brains.

OK – so I’ve divulged a lot here, and talking so much about myself is starting to make me feel a bit sickly, but I suppose it’s best to let you know what I’m about and give some idea of where I want to go.

Anyhow – those of you familiar with Getting Things Done will know that the first step is Collecting  (Corralling your stuff). Tomorrow I’ll be starting on this and sharing my experiences, but for now it’s time for a mug of hot chocolate, and a good sit down and read of Chapter 5. As time goes by you’ll learn more about me and how I get on, so for now I’ll thank you for reading and see you all tomorrow!